Checklist of Administrative Tasks: An Annual To-Do List
Throughout the Year
- During slower times read and weed shelves. Keep them alive and interesting to users.
- Continue to keep your website alive and valid, a place your users want and need to visit.
- Maintain a consideration file of teacher requests and items that would support curricular and student needs.
- Overdues – see policy and procedure
- Order books – see collection development policy
- Keep teachers in the loop for lesson plans – collaboration efforts
- Keep current on birthday club labels, invitations, and announcements
- 2-3 times per month – article in Messenger
- Once/ month – update for Parent committee
- Frequently change display themes – see monthly ideas below and these resources http://www.readwritethink.org/calendar/index.asp
Library Sparks Magazine http://www.brownielocks.com/month2.html http://www.clayton.k12.ga.us/edusvc/instruct/bulletinboards/index.asp
August
Set up calendar in Athena – so fines do not accumulate on weekends, scheduled days off (all vacations) and during the book fair
Set up budget spreadsheet
Get displays in order – put up sign above desk – with this year’s theme
Assess facility for cleanliness to see if all equipment and furniture is in the right place. Retrieve missing and borrowed items. (Things tend to shift over the summer.)
Create “Welcome Back” article for Messenger
Prepare or update lesson plans for beginning of year – focus on library orientation
Schedule classes – ½ hour blocks – weekly for grades 4K-5th, keep blocks of time open for middle school to correspond with LA/Lit classes
Create volunteer request for office (there is a form)
Review any changes in policies or procedures and inform staff.
Prepare orientation activities.
Process new books as time allows – ask volunteer to come in and cover books
Update class lists See Athena Manual for details - update staff member ID numbers - delete last year’s 8th grade - move last year’s 7th grade up to 8th grade, add new students, delete students who have moved to a different school, then subdivide by classroom (see office forclass lists) - continue moving classes up a grade, adding and deleting and separating into classrooms – move from 4K should be last.
- update website September
Library should be open on the first day of school for regularly scheduled classes
Schedule New Berlin public library to come to promote library cards with K5 students during library time
Check the public library schedule of events to promote with students and teachers.
Prepare or update policies for circulation, computer use, etc.
Request last year’s volunteers to help with shelving during the 2nd and 3rd weeks of school (official volunteer lists will not be ready until the 3rd or 4th week of school – and books will need to be shelved)
Orient and train new volunteers.
Distribute forms for Library Birthday Club
Purchase books and print labels for birthday club Prepare a list of profess
Display Themes: Welcome back, Labor Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, Banned Books Week, Study skills, Teachers’ or students’ favorite summer reads, Library Card Sign-up Month, International Literacy Day Literary Birthdays: Richard Wright (4), Paul Fleischman (5), Jack Prelutsky (8), Jon Scieszka (8), Mildred Taylor (13), Tomie DePaola (15), Robert McCloskey (15), H. G. Wells (21), Stephen King (22), F. Scott Fitzgerald (24), William Faulkner (25), Shel Silverstein (25) October
Conduct initial surveys relating to reading interests, user satisfaction, self-efficacy, creating a baseline for comparison later in the year.
Meet with committee to plan Curriculum Day
Host a Teen Read Week activity.
Plan details for Barnes and Noble book fair (Saturday before Thanksgiving – secure band and chorus to sing)
Begin to create book lists for November report cards
Attend WCLA conference
Review and sign up for BER Conference www.ber.org
Display Theme Ideas: Teen Read Week, Halloween (bats, spiders, witches, etc.), Autumn, Harvest, Mysteries, International School Library Day, Computer Learning Month, Consumer Information Month, Discoverer’s Day/Columbus Day, United Nations Day, National Book Month Literary Birthdays: Karen Cushman (4), Frank Herbert (8), R. L. Stine (8), John Lennon (9), Oscar Wilde (16), Eugene O’Neill (16), Arthur Miller (17), Phillip Pullman (19), Bruce Brooks (23), Sylvia Plath (27), Dylan Thomas (27), Katherine Paterson (31) November
Distribute book lists for November report cards
Promote Barnes and Noble book fair
Continue planning curriculum day – share plans with principal
Attend Scholastic book fair seminar Display Theme Ideas: Thanksgiving, Immigrants/Pilgrims, Native American Heritage Month, Elections/politics, Harvest, Children’s Book Week, Veteran’s Day, American Education Week, Family Literacy Day Literary Birthdays: Stephen Crane (1), Albert Camus (7), Bram Stoker (8), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11), Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (11), Robert Lewis Stevenson (13), Daniel Pinkwater (15), Margaret Atwood (18), Charles Schultz (26), William Blake (28), Louisa May Alcott (29), Madeline L’Engle (29), C. S. Lewis (29), Jonathan Swift (30), Mark Twain (30) December Recruit Volunteers for Scholastic Book Fair – school will have list of names – need to have people on list choose job and shift Display Theme Ideas: Holidays (Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa), Winter, Gifts, New Year, Human Rights Day (10) Literary Birthdays: David Macaulay (2), Joseph Conrad (2), Walt Disney (5), Emily Dickinson (10), Melvil Dewey (10), Nostradamus (14), Jane Austen (16), Jerry Pinkney (22), Avi (Wortis) (23), Rudyard Kipling (30) January
Continue preparation for book fair (Catholic Schools Week)
Book fair promotion
Finalize details for Curriculum Day Display Board Theme Ideas: Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Snowflakes, Winter Olympics, Resolutions, National Book Month, National Hobby Month Literary Birthdays: J. D. Salinger (1), Isaac Asimov (2), Carolyn Haywood (3), J. R. R. Tolkien (3), Jacob Grimm (4), Sherlock Holmes (6), Zora Neal Hurston (7), Robert Cormier (17), A. A. Milne (18), Edgar Allan Poe (19), Virginia Woolf (25), Lewis Carroll (27), Lloyd Alexander (30) February
Finalize Curriculum Day details Display Theme Ideas: Black History Month, Valentine’s Day/Love around the World, Romance! Groundhog Day, Chinese New Year, Presidents Day, Job Shadow Day Literary Birthdays: Jerry Spinelli (1), Langston Hughes (1), James Joyce (2), Ayn Rand (2), Joan Lowry Nixon (3), James Michener (3), Charles Dickens (7), Laura Ingalls Wilder (7), Jules Verne (8), Alice Walker (9), Judy Blume (12), Jacqueline Woodson (12), Jane Yolen (12), William Sleator (13), Chaim Potok (17), Robert Newton Peck (17), Toni Morrison (18), Amy Tan (19),
W. E. B. DuBois (23), Wilhelm Grimm (24), Cynthia Voight (25), Victor Hugo (26), John Steinbeck (27), Donna Jo Napoli (28) March
Solicit teacher input for purchases – especially DVD’s Display Theme Ideas: Women’s History Month, Beginning of spring, Wind/kites, Read Across America (March 2), National Craft Month, National Nutrition Month, Music in Our Schools Month, March Madness (basketball), Freedom of Information Day Literary Birthdays: Dr. Seuss (2), John Irving (2), Sid Fleischman (16), Virginia Hamilton (12), Lois Lowry (20), Louis Sachar (20), Randolph Caldecott (22), Robert Frost (26), Tennessee Williams (26), Julia Alvarez (27) April Display Theme ideas: Earth Day, April Fools Day, National Library Week, School Library Media Month, Zoo and Aquarium Month, Shakespeare’s birth and death, National Poetry Month, Young People’s Poetry Month, Rain, Flowers, Rebirth, Easter/Passover, School Library Media Month, National Library Week, TV Turn-off Week, World Book and Copyright Day, International Children’s Book Day (April 2), Administrative Assistants’ Day, National Volunteer Week, El Día de los Niños/ El Día de los Libros Literary Birthdays: Anne McCaffrey (1), Hans Christian Anderson (2), Washington Irving (3), Maya Angelou (4), Richard Peck (5), Booker T. Washington (5), William Wordsworth (7), Gary Soto (12), Charlotte Brontë (21), William Shakespeare (23), Lois Duncan (28) May
Schedule battle of the books – prizes, volunteers etc.
Begin major campaign (notices, posters, letters home, etc.) to retrieve problem overdue materials. Remind teachers to return materials they no longer need.
Set and publicize the last date for all loans and the last date for returns—regular loans? Graduating class? Faculty?
Work with St. Leonard’s finalize summer reading lists. Post reading list on Web page and share with public libraries and bookstores.
Promote books on the summer reading list.
Invite New Berlin library to speak to grades K5-5th grade – 4 separate sessions
Create an overdue list and run overdue notices.
Communicate with the office about consequences for students who neglect to return materials and procedures and send list of fines and lost materials.
Distribute overdue notices to students and send friendly reminders to teachers with outstanding materials. Offer to extend loans to teachers for summer use.
Inventory supplies and equipment to assess needs for next school year.
Examine consideration file and survey faculty by e-mail for final input on materials before preparing purchase orders.
Assess subscriptions—magazines -Decide on renewals
Used library book sale. Display Theme Ideas: Flowers, Spring, Mother’s Day, Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Older Americans Month, National Teacher’s Day, May Day, Cinco de Mayo, Physical Fitness Month, Memorial Day, National PTA Teacher Appreciation Week, Get Caught Reading Month Literary Birthdays: Todd Strasser (5), Milton Meltzer (8), Caroline B. Cooney (10), Christopher Paul Curtis (10), L. Frank Baum (15), Paul Zindel (15), Bruce Coville (16), Gary Paulsen (17), Malcolm X (19), Arnold Lobel (22), Arthur Conan Doyle (22), M. E. Kerr (27), Walt Whitman (31) June
Take Inventory of one section of library - Fiction - Easy Reader, East Chapter, Picture books, Easy Nonfiction - Non Fiction
Battle of the Books – 5th and 6th grades
Weed to make sure room on shelves for all returned books
Catalog professional materials
Collect and inventory outstanding equipment—digital cameras, projectors, etc.
Arrange for summer cleaning and repair of equipment.
Remove all holds and reserves from patron records Straighten up—shelve everything left on book trucks, take down bulletin boards and displays, remove materials from shelves and desktops for more effective summer cleaning.
Relabel shelves
Checklist of Administrative Tasks: An Annual To-Do List
Throughout the Year
- During slower times read and weed shelves. Keep them alive and interesting to users.
- Continue to keep your website alive and valid, a place your users want and need to visit.
- Maintain a consideration file of teacher requests and items that would support curricular and student needs.
- Overdues – see policy and procedure
- Order books – see collection development policy
- Keep teachers in the loop for lesson plans – collaboration efforts
- Keep current on birthday club labels, invitations, and announcements
- 2-3 times per month – article in Messenger
- Once/ month – update for Parent committee
- Frequently change display themes – see monthly ideas below and these resources
http://www.readwritethink.org/calendar/index.asp
Library Sparks Magazine
http://www.brownielocks.com/month2.html
http://www.clayton.k12.ga.us/edusvc/instruct/bulletinboards/index.asp
August
Set up calendar in Athena – so fines do not accumulate on weekends, scheduled days off (all vacations) and during the book fair
Set up budget spreadsheet
Get displays in order – put up sign above desk – with this year’s theme
Assess facility for cleanliness to see if all equipment and furniture is in the right place. Retrieve missing and borrowed items. (Things tend to shift over the summer.)
Create “Welcome Back” article for Messenger
Prepare or update lesson plans for beginning of year – focus on library orientation
Schedule classes – ½ hour blocks – weekly for grades 4K-5th, keep blocks of time open for middle school to correspond with LA/Lit classes
Create volunteer request for office (there is a form)
Review any changes in policies or procedures and inform staff.
Prepare orientation activities.
Process new books as time allows – ask volunteer to come in and cover books
Update class lists See Athena Manual for details
- update staff member ID numbers
- delete last year’s 8th grade
- move last year’s 7th grade up to 8th grade, add new students, delete students who have moved to a different school, then subdivide by classroom (see office for class lists)
- continue moving classes up a grade, adding and deleting and separating into classrooms – move from 4K should be last.
- update website
September
Library should be open on the first day of school for regularly scheduled classes
Schedule New Berlin public library to come to promote library cards with K5 students during library time
Check the public library schedule of events to promote with students and teachers.
Prepare or update policies for circulation, computer use, etc.
Request last year’s volunteers to help with shelving during the 2nd and 3rd weeks of school (official volunteer lists will not be ready until the 3rd or 4th week of school – and books will need to be shelved)
Orient and train new volunteers.
Distribute forms for Library Birthday Club
Purchase books and print labels for birthday club
Prepare a list of profess
Display Themes: Welcome back, Labor Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, Banned Books Week, Study skills, Teachers’ or students’ favorite summer reads, Library Card Sign-up Month, International Literacy Day
Literary Birthdays: Richard Wright (4), Paul Fleischman (5), Jack Prelutsky (8), Jon Scieszka (8), Mildred Taylor (13), Tomie DePaola (15), Robert McCloskey (15), H. G. Wells (21), Stephen King (22), F. Scott Fitzgerald (24), William Faulkner (25), Shel Silverstein (25)
October
Conduct initial surveys relating to reading interests, user satisfaction, self-efficacy, creating a baseline for comparison later in the year.
Meet with committee to plan Curriculum Day
Host a Teen Read Week activity.
Plan details for Barnes and Noble book fair (Saturday before Thanksgiving – secure band and chorus to sing)
Begin to create book lists for November report cards
Attend WCLA conference
Review and sign up for BER Conference www.ber.org
Display Theme Ideas: Teen Read Week, Halloween (bats, spiders, witches, etc.), Autumn, Harvest, Mysteries, International School Library Day, Computer Learning Month, Consumer Information Month, Discoverer’s Day/Columbus Day, United Nations Day, National Book Month
Literary Birthdays: Karen Cushman (4), Frank Herbert (8), R. L. Stine (8), John Lennon (9), Oscar Wilde (16), Eugene O’Neill (16), Arthur Miller (17), Phillip Pullman (19), Bruce Brooks (23), Sylvia Plath (27), Dylan Thomas (27), Katherine Paterson (31)
November
Distribute book lists for November report cards
Promote Barnes and Noble book fair
Continue planning curriculum day – share plans with principal
Attend Scholastic book fair seminar
Display Theme Ideas: Thanksgiving, Immigrants/Pilgrims, Native American Heritage Month, Elections/politics, Harvest, Children’s Book Week, Veteran’s Day, American Education Week, Family Literacy Day
Literary Birthdays: Stephen Crane (1), Albert Camus (7), Bram Stoker (8), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11), Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (11), Robert Lewis Stevenson (13), Daniel Pinkwater (15), Margaret Atwood (18), Charles Schultz (26), William Blake (28), Louisa May Alcott (29), Madeline L’Engle (29), C. S. Lewis (29), Jonathan Swift (30), Mark Twain (30)
December
Recruit Volunteers for Scholastic Book Fair – school will have list of names – need to have people on list choose job and shift
Display Theme Ideas: Holidays (Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa), Winter, Gifts, New Year, Human Rights Day (10)
Literary Birthdays: David Macaulay (2), Joseph Conrad (2), Walt Disney (5), Emily Dickinson (10), Melvil Dewey (10), Nostradamus (14), Jane Austen (16), Jerry Pinkney (22), Avi (Wortis) (23), Rudyard Kipling (30)
January
Continue preparation for book fair (Catholic Schools Week)
Book fair promotion
Finalize details for Curriculum Day
Display Board Theme Ideas: Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Snowflakes, Winter Olympics, Resolutions, National Book Month, National Hobby Month
Literary Birthdays: J. D. Salinger (1), Isaac Asimov (2), Carolyn Haywood (3), J. R. R. Tolkien (3), Jacob Grimm (4), Sherlock Holmes (6), Zora Neal Hurston (7), Robert Cormier (17), A. A. Milne (18), Edgar Allan Poe (19), Virginia Woolf (25), Lewis Carroll (27), Lloyd Alexander (30)
February
Finalize Curriculum Day details
Display Theme Ideas: Black History Month, Valentine’s Day/Love around the World, Romance! Groundhog Day, Chinese New Year, Presidents Day, Job Shadow Day
Literary Birthdays: Jerry Spinelli (1), Langston Hughes (1), James Joyce (2), Ayn Rand (2), Joan Lowry Nixon (3), James Michener (3), Charles Dickens (7), Laura Ingalls Wilder (7), Jules Verne (8), Alice Walker (9), Judy Blume (12), Jacqueline Woodson (12), Jane Yolen (12), William Sleator (13), Chaim Potok (17), Robert Newton Peck (17), Toni Morrison (18), Amy Tan (19),
W. E. B. DuBois (23), Wilhelm Grimm (24), Cynthia Voight (25), Victor Hugo (26), John Steinbeck (27), Donna Jo Napoli (28)
March
Solicit teacher input for purchases – especially DVD’s
Display Theme Ideas: Women’s History Month, Beginning of spring, Wind/kites, Read Across America (March 2), National Craft Month, National Nutrition Month, Music in Our Schools Month, March Madness (basketball), Freedom of Information Day
Literary Birthdays: Dr. Seuss (2), John Irving (2), Sid Fleischman (16), Virginia Hamilton (12), Lois Lowry (20), Louis Sachar (20), Randolph Caldecott (22), Robert Frost (26), Tennessee Williams (26), Julia Alvarez (27)
April
Display Theme ideas: Earth Day, April Fools Day, National Library Week, School Library Media Month, Zoo and Aquarium Month, Shakespeare’s birth and death, National Poetry Month, Young People’s Poetry Month, Rain, Flowers, Rebirth, Easter/Passover, School Library Media Month, National Library Week, TV Turn-off Week, World Book and Copyright Day, International Children’s Book Day (April 2), Administrative Assistants’ Day, National Volunteer Week, El Día de los Niños/ El Día de los Libros
Literary Birthdays: Anne McCaffrey (1), Hans Christian Anderson (2), Washington Irving (3), Maya Angelou (4), Richard Peck (5), Booker T. Washington (5), William Wordsworth (7), Gary Soto (12), Charlotte Brontë (21), William Shakespeare (23), Lois Duncan (28)
May
Schedule battle of the books – prizes, volunteers etc.
Begin major campaign (notices, posters, letters home, etc.) to retrieve problem overdue materials. Remind teachers to return materials they no longer need.
Set and publicize the last date for all loans and the last date for returns—regular loans? Graduating class? Faculty?
Work with St. Leonard’s finalize summer reading lists. Post reading list on Web page and share with public libraries and bookstores.
Promote books on the summer reading list.
Invite New Berlin library to speak to grades K5-5th grade – 4 separate sessions
Create an overdue list and run overdue notices.
Communicate with the office about consequences for students who neglect to return materials and procedures and send list of fines and lost materials.
Distribute overdue notices to students and send friendly reminders to teachers with outstanding materials. Offer to extend loans to teachers for summer use.
Inventory supplies and equipment to assess needs for next school year.
Examine consideration file and survey faculty by e-mail for final input on materials before preparing purchase orders.
Assess subscriptions—magazines -Decide on renewals
Used library book sale.
Display Theme Ideas: Flowers, Spring, Mother’s Day, Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Older Americans Month, National Teacher’s Day, May Day, Cinco de Mayo, Physical Fitness Month, Memorial Day, National PTA Teacher Appreciation Week, Get Caught Reading Month
Literary Birthdays: Todd Strasser (5), Milton Meltzer (8), Caroline B. Cooney (10), Christopher Paul Curtis (10), L. Frank Baum (15), Paul Zindel (15), Bruce Coville (16), Gary Paulsen (17), Malcolm X (19), Arnold Lobel (22), Arthur Conan Doyle (22), M. E. Kerr (27), Walt Whitman (31)
June
Take Inventory of one section of library
- Fiction
- Easy Reader, East Chapter, Picture books, Easy Nonfiction
- Non Fiction
Battle of the Books – 5th and 6th grades
Weed to make sure room on shelves for all returned books
Catalog professional materials
Collect and inventory outstanding equipment—digital cameras, projectors, etc.
Arrange for summer cleaning and repair of equipment.
Remove all holds and reserves from patron records
Straighten up—shelve everything left on book trucks, take down bulletin boards and displays, remove materials from shelves and desktops for more effective summer cleaning.
Relabel shelves